Frac’ing

In North Dakota, a state with a 3% unemployment rate, the labor shortage is so great that businesses are now employing international students who have obtained four-month work visas. While many states with two or three times North Dakota’s unemployment rates are eagerly looking for government bail-outs and government-funded “stimulus” packages, North Dakota has embraced the ultimate stimulus–a high degree …

Below are three graphs showing the distance between aquifers and induced hydraulic fractures. Two are scientifically derived field images from thousands of hydraulic fracture stimulations. One is a fictitious piece of propaganda put out by a media opportunist. Can you tell which is which?

Dear Mark Ruffalo, As an energy researcher I am disappointed that you are using the media attention over your new Avengers movie to attack “fracking”–the revolutionary technology that uses controlled explosives high-pressure water jets to fracture once-useless rock formations so as to release bountiful oil and natural gas. I have no objection to celebrities getting involved with important political issues–if …

In Fracing Amazing: The Story of the Eagle Ford Shale, I explained how innovations in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of once-useless source rock unlocked the Eagle Ford Shale formation. Here are some other developments in the growing Shale Revolution in oil and gas production. Natural gas production is so prolific that the price of this clean form of energy …

Last week at Penn State, I spoke to Young Americans for Freedom about why I think fracking is amazingly positive, economically and environmentally. I’ll post the Q&A on Wednesday. Want me to speak to your group? Email me at alex at alexepstein dot com.

Tonight, April 5, Alex will discuss the new technology of fracking – what it is and what is the grave danger of NOT fracking. If you are near Penn State you can hear Alex speak at 7:00 PM at 216 Boucke, Penn State University. Find out more at http://www.facebook.com/events/316793955050825/.

Ann McElhinney is one of the gutsiest critics of anti-industrialists–self-proclaimed “environmentalists”–around. She is spearheading the upcoming documentary, FrackNation, which aims to educate the public about the incredible technology that is hydraulic fracturing (see our recent piece, “Fracing Amazing,” for more). The Objective Standard blog recently conducted an interview with McElhinney, which is well worth reading. Here’s one of my favorite parts …

In 1899, eight men dug a 70 foot deep well by hand, creating the first oil well in Kern River, Kern County, California. Many wells and hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil followed, and by WWII it was estimated that there were still another 54 million barrels of oil in reserve. By 1986, technology had developed and the field had been made to produce 740 million …

If you have been hearing about “fracking” and want to know what the excitement is about, read Matt Ridley’s recent article documenting the exciting new discoveries of massive amounts of previously inaccessible energy. What’s that you say? Gas is running out? Have you not heard the news? It’s not. Until five years ago, gas was the fuel everybody thought would …